by Megan Tackney, Outreach Program Associate, National Women's Law Center

In my first job out of college I found myself working at my local women’s crisis center.

Wait, let me make a correction — I didn’t find myself there. I wanted to be there. I wanted to help. I thought I knew what to expect when I walked through the doors — which were padlocked, barred, and rigged with an alarm and camera.

“I don't know if you read in the paper, but they passed a law saying women who do the same work as men will get paid the same thing. Equal pay."

So said Peggy Olson, a (fictional) copywriter at a Madison Avenue advertising agency on Mad Men, AMC’s critically acclaimed TV series set in 1963. In this week’s episode, Peggy, the agency’s only female employee working in a non-administrative capacity, asked her boss for a raise. And didn’t get one.

Peggy, in Mad Men’s pre-women’s lib era, is a model for a woman making her own way in the world. She started out as a 20-year-old secretary making $35 a week until one of the men on staff noticed that she had a gift for copywriting. She eventually got two promotions, based on pure talent. Now she has her own office and secretary, simply because she was bold enough to ask for them (not bad — many women, in 1963 and 2009 alike, are reluctant to ask for things like promotions and perks, fearing retaliation). Peggy is often still the one who’s sent to get the coffee, and the men on staff have no qualms about making sexist and derogatory comments to her. And she’s paid less than her male colleagues.

This week, when Peggy asked her boss for a raise, she pointed out that she was being paid less than a fellow copywriter, Paul. Paul has the same title she has and isn't nearly as talented or dedicated as Peggy. He does, interestingly, have a degree from Princeton, whereas Peggy has only a secretarial school degree (and couldn't have gone to Princeton in any case, since Princeton didn't start awarding degrees to women until 1969). But being a Princeton alum doesn’t automatically merit getting paid more (especially in Paul’s case, since all he seems to have gotten out of his education was an affectation for fake British accents and mohair).

Can I begin by thanking you for so often being the same people? It makes it so much easier to not have to read twice the number of inflammatory blog posts and articles on the internet. You have so conveniently gone from one bad argument to another, melding the anti-reform and anti-choice messages so seamlessly into one incoherent mistruth – it’s just made it really easy for me to keep up by not expecting your claims to be based on any facts. This has been an amazing time saver allowing me to spend more time on taxing projects like watching the previous seasons of Mad Men so that I can understand the hype and outbid all my competitors on Ebay.

This brings me to my next point – thank you for providing shallow and outrageous arguments why women’s health should be undermined in the current health care legislation. Since polling shows that Americans want medical professionals, not politicians, to decide what should be part of a health benefits package, it did make me wonder – will this finally throw a wrench in their grand scheme of playing politics with women’s health?

Of course you didn’t disappoint. Amidst all your abortion talk, it’s funny that you never remember to mention the fact that the Energy and Commerce bill includes an amendment that would bar the use of federal funds to pay for abortions. The Senate Finance Committee mark that was released today has a similar provision.